Karen Coody Cooper, now living in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, was born in Tulsa in 1946 as Karen Korliss Rollins, and grew up in Collinsville. Her grandmother Callie Coody was enrolled as a child on the Dawes Roll and became a hardworking farm wife near Texanna, Oklahoma, close to her allotment in the former Canadian District of the Cherokee Nation. Callie's grandfather was a son of Jane Ross, elder sister of John Ross, Principal Chief of the Cherokee before Removal and throughout the Civil War in Indian Territory. Cooper chose a museum career and retired from the National Museum of the American Indian in 2007, the same year her first book, Spirited Encounters: American Indians Protest Museum Policies and Practices, was published by AltaMira Press. She also wrote Cherokee Wampum: War and Peace Belts 1730 to Present and Woodchuck Meets Algonquian Cousins, published by soddenbank press. Her poetry volume, Fault Lines: Vulnerable Landscapes, was named the 2010 Best Book of Poetry by the Oklahoma Writers Federation.